Appointments
First Horizon Bank has promoted Catherine Wood to Senior Vice President, Head of Commercial…
Allianz Partners, a world leader in B2B2C insurance and assistance, has appointed Carsten Staat…
Income Insurance Limited has announced the appointment of Lim Sim Seng as Chairman of…
The former Deutsche Bank dealmaker brings over 25 years of experience as Standard Chartered…
Speaking at the Swiss Economic Forum, Ermotti addressed his own tenure as the bank…
Banking
HSBC is selling its A$36 billion ($25.30 billion) Australian home and personal loan book to Blackstone, the largest home loan portfolio sale on record. The deal, announced Friday, is the latest move in CEO Georges Elhedery’s overhaul. Since taking the top job in September 2024, he has cut management ranks, stripped costs and shed non-core operations. The sale is set to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals. Blackstone will hold the portfolio across its Credit and Insurance, Tactical Opportunities and Real Estate Debt Strategies funds, with Pepper Money, a non-bank lender in Australia, managing the loans. Pepper shares rose as much as 6% on Friday, though the stock is down nearly 20% this year. HSBC is only a minor player in Australia’s A$2.5 trillion mortgage market, long dominated by the “Big Four” banks, and it runs no major retail branch network. It will now wind down its Australian retail business over 18 months and refocus on corporate and institutional banking across Australia and New Zealand. Investors approved. Hong Kong-listed shares rose 2.4% to an all-time high of HK$168.5, outpacing a flat Hang Seng Index. London shares rose 0.9% to a record 1,601 pence. HSBC expects the sale to produce a loss of under $100 million by H1 2027, plus about $300 million in restructuring costs and roughly $300 million in foreign currency translation losses, with no impact on its CET1 ratio. The move fits a long retreat. Since the global financial crisis, HSBC has exited low-returning consumer banking from France and Greece to Canada. Last week it agreed to sell its Singapore insurance unit to Allianz; in May it struck a deal to offload its Indonesian retail and wealth operations to OCBC. Blackstone said it plans to keep deploying capital into Australia’s housing market, even as demand softens under higher borrowing costs and tax changes. Westpac said in June that mortgage applications had fallen 10% since the May budget, and National Australia Bank reported a 15% drop in the June quarter. The Herald View: HSBC is done pretending it can be everything everywhere. Selling a $25 billion mortgage book it never scaled, at a modest loss, to focus on corporate and institutional clients is discipline, not retreat. The more interesting side is Blackstone, buying Australian mortgages into a softening market. One party is exiting consumer lending; the other thinks now is the moment to own it. Both can’t be…
Revolut has secured a full Australian banking licence, the first global…
Truist Financial posted higher second-quarter profit as rebounding capital markets lifted…
RBL Bank posted a 27% rise in first-quarter net profit to…
Standard Bank, Africa’s largest lender by assets, processed RMB3.39 billion ($500…
Manulife Philippines has appointed Edgar Tordesillas as General Counsel, effective July 1, 2026. He…
Sun Life is putting more AI into advisors’ hands to cut down on admin…
GXS Bank has launched the GXS Credit Card, an unlimited cashback product issued with…
United Overseas Bank has appointed Tan Choon Hin as Head of ASEAN and Greater…
Payments & Cards
ACI Worldwide has agreed to acquire UK-based paytech Cranium Ventures, adding its SYNAP card-switching technology to ACI Connetic for Cards. The deal will strengthen ACI’s cloud-based card processing capabilities and accelerate its strategy to modernize payment infrastructure for financial institutions.
New Scotia Intelligence features include persistent AI workspaces, content generation tools and collaborative editing, as employee adoption grows quarter on quarter Scotiabank has rolled out new capabilities under Scotia Intelligence, its enterprise AI platform, extending access to a workforce of more than 71,000 employees with the stated aims of improving client experience, speed and risk management. More than 5,500 engineers are now using AI tools to support coding, and the bank reported a 30% quarter-over-quarter increase in employee use of AI to respond to client queries. The new features include Notebooks, a workspace that synthesises files, emails, meeting notes and data into summaries and content drafts; Create, a tool for producing presentations and visual content; and Pages, a collaborative canvas for turning AI outputs into editable shared documents. “We have seen meaningful enterprise-wide adoption of Scotia Intelligence and today’s announcement marks another step forward in how we are deploying AI at scale,” said Phil Thomas, Group Head and Chief Strategy & Operating Officer. The rollout is accompanied by a training programme covering foundational AI literacy through to role-specific applications, supported by workshops, business line champions and mandatory AI risk training. Scotiabank says it was the first Canadian bank to establish a dedicated Data Ethics team and publish a Data Ethics Statement, and reviews AI use cases for fairness, transparency and accountability before launch, with employees required to complete annual attestations. “Integrating AI into daily workflows isn’t just about deploying new technology, it’s about supporting our people as they build new skills and adapt to new ways of working,” said Jenny Poulos, Chief Human Resources…
The Vietnamese tech firm and Singapore lender plan to finalise pilot scope and roadmap within 90 days UOB has signed a memorandum of understanding with Vietnamese technology provider FPT Corporation to modernise how banking services are developed, delivered and scaled across UOB’s core markets, using AI, data analytics, automation, cloud infrastructure and APIs. The agreement also aims to create a platform through which UOB, FPT and broader ecosystem partners can turn innovation priorities into scalable business opportunities, with a focus on supporting cross-border financial services and interconnected financial ecosystems. The two companies said the detailed plan, including pilot scope, implementation roadmap, governance model and expected outcomes, will be finalised within 90…
Mergers & Acquisitions
Liquid Network, a Bitcoin-based payments and settlement network, revealed on Sunday that roughly…
FNBO has agreed to acquire Denver-based InBankshares Corp. in a cash deal valued at up to $204 million, expanding its presence across Colorado and northern New Mexico. The acquisition will add nine Colorado branches and four New Mexico locations, strengthening FNBO’s footprint in key Mountain West markets.
InsuranceDekho and RenewBuy are merging to create India’s largest insurance distribution platform, combining a ₹6,600 crore premium book, 600,000+ digital partners and access to 52 insurers across a pan-India network.
The deal brings a two-million-user youth banking platform into Barclays UK, with US…
Raiffeisen Bank International has now received acceptances covering more than half of Addiko’s…
Wealth & Investment
Commonwealth Bank is cutting its Merchant Service Fee for in-store payments from 1.1 per cent…
Liquid Network, a Bitcoin-based payments and settlement network, revealed on Sunday that roughly $320 million…
Avaloq has named Nidhi Singh as its new Chief Product and Development Officer and a…
Willis, a WTW business, has named Trevor Madden Head of Captive and Insurance Management Solutions…
Revolut’s national charter bid, combined with its stablecoin plans, faces significant regulatory hurdles as it seeks both banking and digital-dollar approvals from U.S. regulators.